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Abrupt climate change threatens the world with runaway global warming, extreme weather weirding, and global ecosystem collapse unless together we embrace a 1.5° C warming goal and begin to immediately cut emissions. From December 1-12 world leaders gather in Lima, Peru to negotiate the future of our planet. The Climate Change Conference, COP20/CMP, is a key event as we head towards the 2015 Climate Conference in Paris, where a universal agreement on climate change is expected to be adopted. Failure of earlier climate talks to begin cutting emissions means that even the dangerously inadequate target of limiting warming to 2° C is slipping away. Much science indicates that in fact limiting average global warming to 1.5° C is a more sufficient goal to avoid the worst ravages of abrupt climate change and the possibility of biosphere collapse. Neither target will be possible unless ambitious global and differentiated emission reductions begin immediately. Tell climate negotiators as the Lima climate conference opens that if they are not now cutting emissions fast they are failing.

The Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) claims to certify the sustainability of forest management. Yet for two decades FSC with the support of major NGOs like WWF and Greenpeace have greenwashed industrial scale old-growth forest logging - across an area two times the size of Texas for throw away consumer items such as toilet paper and lawn furniture - as being environmentally sensitive. A new motion has been presented by FSC member Greenpeace at FSC’s General Assembly, and passed, which would increase protections for primary and other old-growth forests. EcoInternet has campaigned quixotically for such limitations upon FSC primary forest logging for a decade. Please make it clear that best science indicates old-growth forest logging is never ecologically sustainable, and FSC must end its certification of such logging by implementing Motion 65, in order to set a precedent that marks the beginning of the end for all old-growth forest logging globally.

It has been two years since EcoInternet first alerted the international community that SOCO International – a London-listed oil company – planned to explore for oil in Virunga National Park. Virunga is Africa’s oldest national park and an UNESCO World Heritage site; and is home to a large population of wild gorillas, many other important wildlife species, primary rainforest ecosystems, and forest-dependent communities. Our earlier protests together caused other companies considering oil exploration to pull out. And opposition is growing as WWF has embraced the campaign, successfully bringing the case to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). Oil exploration in these globally vital rainforest ecosystems will further set a dangerous precedent that nowhere – whether protected, or ecologically important – is immune from oil industry destruction. It appears every last bit of Earth's large, wild and intact ecosystems will be sacrificed to industrial development – to extend our dependence upon fossil fuel, and delay transition now to renewable energy sources – ensuring abrupt run-away climate change and global ecosystem collapse.

Only a year ago together Ecological Internet and you participated in successful protests to end industrial clearcut logging in 170,000 hectares of Tasmania, Australia’s old-growth temperate rainforests; as vital intact ecosystems including Butlers Gorge; and the Florentine, Weld and Styx valleys, were added to the Tasmanian Wilderness World Heritage Area. Now Australia’s ecologically challenged federal government – led by Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott, who famously stated “climate change is crap” – is reneging on these commitments, in an unprecedented move pushing to remove 74,000 hectares from World Heritage Area protection. We need your help to once again call on the Australian government to honor their international obligations and protect Tasmania’s World Heritage old-growth temperate rainforests from industrial destruction. Tasmanian, Australian, and global ecosystem sustainability depend upon doing so.

Typhoon Haiyan, believed to be the biggest storm on record to make landfall, clearly demonstrates the risk posed by extreme super storms intensified by abrupt climate change. Yet the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) – the United Nations science body that assesses the state of climate science – is failing to carry out a comprehensive risk assessment that takes into account amplifying positive feedbacks and worst case scenarios. Without such a transparent and comprehensive climate risk assessment, that is free of government interference, the world finds it difficult to assess climate risk and is unlikely to embrace urgent emissions cuts, protect and restore ecosystems, and implement a global carbon tax. Demand such reforms at the IPCC.

Next week California is to decide whether REDD+ forest carbon offsets – which include funding for first time industrial logging of old-growth forests – is worthy of inclusion as a carbon credit within the state’s carbon markets. Logging old-growth forests is an ecological disaster that threatens local livelihoods, biodiversity, ecosystems, climate, and the biosphere; and must not be funded by carbon markets. Members of the forest carbon industry supporting REDD+ must be compelled to stop their old forest logging greenwash - or face ridicule, protest, and an end to public support, until they do.

Greenpeace continues to espouse nonsense that logging old-growth forests is protection and can be done in an environmentally acceptable manner. Their recent case studies claim that Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) certification of first time industrial logging of hundreds of millions of acres of old-growth forests has “led to a substantial improvement in forest management practices.” Loss and diminishment of primary rainforests and other old-growth forests are never ecologically sustainable – and threaten local peoples, species, ecosystems, climate, and the biosphere with collapse and death. Please demand that Greenpeace and pals resign from FSC immediately, end all involvement with primary rainforest and other old-growth logging, and work exclusively for old forest protection, restoration, and small-scale local eco-forestry. We have been asking Greenpeace politely to stop helping log old-growth for the past six years (see http://bit.ly/GPlogold ) and been stonewalled and ridiculed, during which time many old forests have fallen and the fate of the biosphere become more unclear.

HSBC Bank continues to fund logging companies pillaging old-growth rainforests and causing human rights abuses in Sarawak, Malaysia, and expanding globally. After ravaging all but 5% of Sarawak’s once pristine tropical rainforests, HSBC’s Sarawak clients – described in Papua New Guinea as the “Malaysian timber mafia” – now dominate the global, ecocidal old-growth timber industry. Anyone participating in the industrial destruction of Earth’s last old-growth forests – be they banks, governments, corporations, or NGOs – are legitimate protest targets, if we are to maintain local well-being and a habitable Earth for all. Please demand that HSBC end all involvement with old-growth rainforest logging.

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Notorious Malaysian illegal loggers Rimbunan Hijau have diversified into mining in primary rainforests, in East Sepik threatening unique nomadic cave-dwellers and their 20,000 year old ancient stenciled cave art. Support the local resistance and demand an end to indigenous genocide and rainforest ecocide in the name of false development that is little more than pillaging and plundering of cultural and biological diversity.

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India is a thriving democratic nation with tremendous potential to achieve just, equitable, and ecologically sustainable national development that could last forever. Yet India is heading towards social and ecological collapse unless it stops burning coal and clearing its natural ecosystems, especially important old-growth forest remnants. The momentum of unfettered economic and population growth sweeping India is so severely damaging to the environment that failure to stop burning and cutting threatens the nation's reliable climate, food and water supplies, and its future potential for sustained national economic advancement. India is an amazing place in so many ways. There is still hope that they will come to understand the importance of a different development model based upon intact natural ecosystems.

The Areng Valley in the Cardamom Mountains of south-west Cambodia is threatened with flooding by a Chinese hydropower dam. This biodiversity gem - home of the Siamese crocodile and indigenous Khmer Daeum - is to be destroyed for a relatively small amount of electricity. Standing large, connected, and ecologically intact old-growth forests are required for local and global ecological sustainability and well-being.

Tiny Avon, New Jersey, is moving forward with plans to rebuild their ocean-front boardwalk - recently destroyed by Hurricane Sandy - using ill-gotten old-growth rainforest timbers. Loss of primary rainforests is a primary cause of abrupt climate change, as well as mass extinction, social disintegration, and ecosystem decline. Unless we break the cycle of destroying ecosystems for luxury consumption, we can expect further climate weirding and biosphere collapse. Tell Avon to please follow New York Cities lead and use readily available alternatives, and ensure Hurricane Sandy rebuilding does not cause further ecological damage.

Please support Ecuador's Kichwa villagers, who the Guardian newspaper reports vow to resist oil prospecting by the state-backed company Petroamazonas at all costs. The Kichwa tribe has said they are ready to fight to the death to protect their rainforests, which cover 70,000 hectares, adjacent and part of Yasuni National Park, and huge additional Ecuadorean rainforests are threatened by new industrial oil auctions as well. Industrial development of rainforests for oil in the Amazon has a long history of destroying ecosystems, including fouling water. Tell President Correa that standing, intact old-growth forest ecosystems are a requirement for local advancement and for local and global ecological sustainability; and demand that the invasion of indigenous nations' rainforests be halted.

Recent revelations of illegal logging in the Democratic Republic of Congo's (DRC) rainforests demonstrate yet again that globally logging of old growth forests remains irredeemably corrupt and inevitably devastating to rainforest ecology. After years of international assistance and a "moratorium" on new rainforest logging, it is revealed that local permits for individuals to clear rainforest are being abused by the government and industrial loggers, even as the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) and NGOs pressure for "sustainable" industrial destruction of Congo's primary rainforests. For DRC's local people and the biosphere, it is time to ban old growth logging in the DRC and globally. The DRC government must be convinced to abandon inherently corrupt industrial-scale rainforest clearance for log export – before the nation's rainforests, ecological sustainability, and future development potential are gone forever – and be justly compensated for doing so. Instead they must focus upon developing ways for local communities to benefit from standing old forests. Both local and global ecological sustainability depend upon doing so.

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There exists near unanimous scientific consensus that abrupt climate change is occurring, that it is caused by burning fossil fuels and clearing natural ecosystems, and that observable and escalating impacts indicate it may be worse than worst case predictions, threatening the habitability of our one shared biosphere. Almost certainly there is no way to stop entirely the warming and climate weirding; it is already too far progressed. Yet our immediate actions in the short term to cut – or fail to cut – carbon and greenhouse gas emissions will determine its severity, whether it will eventually stabilize or become runaway, and whether it is survivable. The single policy action that could occur most quickly, and significantly reduce emissions, is to place a price upon emitting carbon through a tax. The funds raised from a carbon tax can replace other taxes, be returned to low-income earners, and be used for other laudable goals including paying down the deficit, developing low-emission energy systems, and protecting and restoring global ecosystems. Abrupt climate change will not be appeased, but it can be taxed, and thus reduced, through first a national and eventually a global carbon tax.

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CNN has become increasingly indebted to fossil fuel advertising, and greenwashes abrupt climate change as a result. CNN's coverage of Frankenstorm Sandy continues to virtually ignore abrupt climate change, and the abundance of science indicating this is a climate change enhanced disaster. CNN coal funding in particular has resulted in infrequent and biased coverage of climate and other related ecological issues, and has abetted US Presidential candidates' silence on climate change. CNN must indicate how they will change their business model to allow improved, propaganda free, and increased coverage of the huge amount of daily news regarding our fossil fuel addiction; North America's tar sands, coal and fracking ecocide; and the many looming global ecological emergencies. CNN must get the story right on Sandy being abrupt climate change.

New logging contracts have been issued across 40% of Liberia's primary rainforests in only two years of resumed industrial logging. A full one quarter of Liberia’s total landmass – half of its best primary rainforests – were granted using secretive and illegal logging permits. Malaysian logging giant Samling, who has a long history of illegal logging from Cambodia to Guyana to Papua New Guinea, is a major beneficiary. Such major corruption – after years of logging fueled war, $30 million in international subsidies for "sustainable" rainforest logging, and a resumption of logging only since 2010 – shows clearly that Liberia's rainforest logging remains irredeemably corrupt and inevitably ecologically devastating. What if the $30 million invested in resuming "sustainable logging" had been used instead to find ways for local communities to benefit from standing old forests? For local peoples and the biosphere, it is time to ban primary forest logging in Liberia and globally.

"Though I do not believe that a plant will spring up where no seed has been, I have great faith in a seed. Convince me that you have a seed there, and I am prepared to expect wonders."
- Henry David Thoreau, Faith in a Seed

From seeds come all life, power, wealth and well-being. Control over seeds – and knowing whether our food products have been genetically modified – means control over our lives, our food safety, and our freedom. Open pollinated, non-genetically modified seeds are a human right. We must not recognize any law that illegitimately makes seed the private property of corporations. And we must assert the right to know what we're eating, through labeling of all genetically engineered foods. It is time to reclaim Thoreau's faith in a seed from Monsanto.

Brazil’s government – host of the completed “Rio+20” UN Conference on Sustainable Development devoted to sustainable development and sustaining ecosystems – is planning to build dozens of dams on tributaries to the Amazon -- including the controversial $11 billion Belo Monte project. Industrial destruction of intact primary rainforest ecosystems based upon ecocide and genocide is not “the future we want” – a motto of Rio+20. These plans for massive Amazon dam construction reveal Brazil’s meaningless rhetoric regarding environmental sustainability and sustainable development, as they hypocritically continue destroying key regional and global ecosystems. Brazil’s deceptive doublespeak regarding sustaining ecology must not be allowed to stand unchallenged during Rio+20. Stand with brave indigenous protestors who recently dismantled a portion of Belo Monte’s construction (pictured), as we call upon all Rio+20 delegates to demand Brazil cancel Belo Monte and other Amazon rainforest destroying dams.

As the world faces an unprecedented ecological and social emergency, leaders of the US, UK and Germany dawdle as Earth burns. Their absent, failed leadership obstructs international efforts to protect our one collapsing biosphere while sustainably meeting all of humanity’s basic needs. Demand that the absent leaders from Rio+20 immediately make their way to the UN Conference on Sustainable Development, and/or instruct their negotiators to stop obstructing an action-based agenda to sustain global ecology and achieve sustainable development.

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Paul Watson, the founder and leader of the aggressive and highly effective marine conservation group “Sea Shepherd” – known mainly for disrupting whale hunts, documented on the reality TV program “Whale Wars” – has been detained in Germany at the request of Costa Rica, which wants him extradited on trumped up charges from shark fin poachers and whale killers. Ecological Internet strongly supports Sea Shepherd and their forthcoming “global campaign to save sharks from extinction”. We agree with Captain Hammarstedt that “Captain Paul Watson belongs on a ship on the high seas protecting sharks, whales, and other marine life, not in some jail cell here in Germany.”

In a global tragedy, an entire important orangutan habitat was intentionally set ablaze in past weeks with nearly 100 fires. These ongoing rainforest peat fires and land clearing by palm oil firms - in an important rainforest habitat in western Indonesia - could extirpate the entire local population, killing off some 200 orangutans. The Tripa swamp rainforest in Aceh, Indonesia – home to one of the most densely populated remaining groups of wild orangutans in the world – is ablaze as palm oil companies rush to clear forests before a court case stops their plantation expansion. Up to 100 of an already much diminished population may have been killed in recent months, and unless the land grabs and rainforest burning are immediately stopped, the local population of critically endangered Sumatran orangutan (Pongo abelii) may soon go locally extinct, and the whole species soon thereafter.

Plans are to build a highway through Alto Purus - Peru’s largest national park – comprised of vital intact Amazonian rainforest ecosystems and inhabited by at least two 'uncontacted' indigenous tribes. Let Peru's President know intact, standing rainforests - looked after by their traditional indigenous inhabitants - are a requirement for local advancement and global ecological sustainability.

Earth is facing the twin global ecological emergencies of abrupt climate change and land being scoured of natural ecosystems. Sadly, corporate American NGOs and the United Nations are responding to these crises by further promoting logging ancient forests. The United Nations REDD+ program to protect primary and old growth forests as a climate change and deforestation solution has been hi-jacked by logging interests and their big pro-logging NGO friends, and will instead subsidize primary forest logging for new plantations. REDD has become a gravy train for consultants, greenwashing NGOs and charlatans of many sorts - claiming logging ancient rainforests for the first time protects them! Old standing natural forest ecosystems are key to sustaining climate, ecosystems, biodiversity, local livelihoods humanity and the Earth System. Corporate NGOs supporting REDD+ must be compelled to stop their old forest logging greenwash - or face ridicule, protest, and an end to public support, until they do.

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Brazil's industrial agriculture lobby has forced through their Congress changes to the forest code, the primary legal instrument related to Amazon rainforest protections. It has been done without any scientific inputs, and in a way that will greatly expand industrial agriculture by reducing ecological protections. Newly elected President Dilma Rousseff must be encouraged to veto the bill, something she promised to do during the election. Efforts to address forest code deficiencies must recommence in a manner that incorporates the latest agro-ecological science regarding sustainable agriculture and the importance of large, connected and intact rainforest ecosystems within agricultural landscapes. Without a veto, recent progress in Amazon rainforest protection is at stake just as Brazil is to host the Rio+20 Earth Summit in 2012.

Belize’s renowned rainforests, beaches, and Mayan homelands are threatened with a resource rampage by a corrupt government confronted with massive foreign debt. With the Prime Minister's permission, Colorado-based oil company US Capital Energy is drilling seismic testing lines through the ecologically spectacular Sarstoon-Temash national park - against international treaty commitments and a Belizean Supreme Court ruling. These cleared lines are now being used by poachers to ransack the rainforest, with stolen timbers transported to Guatemala and onward to China.

The world is careening towards abrupt climate change and global ecosystem collapse. Global climate talks have been stymied by an inability to reconcile the historic carbon debt for past inequitable development with reasonable demands that all nations commit to differentiated emission reductions. Tell Durban climate meeting delegates that failure to act now upon the looming climate emergency means governments have abdicated and the people will lead.

Plans by Uganda's President to partially destroy the Mabira rainforest - one of the nation's most important rainforest preserves - have surfaced again after being defeated in 2007. Let the Ugandan government know rainforests and their ecological services including water, climate and biodiversity are far more important than sugar which can be grown elsewhere. Together with local opposition Ecological Internet has defeated this project twice before, let's do it again.

SHAME! Rainforest Action Network (RAN) is one of the primary obstacles to protecting ancient rainforests as they promote their first time industrial logging. RAN founded and ardently supports the Forest Stewardship Council's (FSC) destruction of 320,000,000 acres of primary forests (the size of South Africa), including for toilet paper and lawn furniture. Recently RAN threw another swanky celebrity filled party to congratulate themselves for logging primary forests to protect them, and to raise further money for more such "rainforest protection". Noted author Naomi Klein was their guest of honor and received an award from RAN. Please make Naomi aware of RAN's shocking greenwash, ask that she return the award to protest RAN's disaster capitalism, and demand that RAN resign from FSC.

The Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) brand gets 70% of its timber and pulp by greenwashing current and planned destruction of 130,000,000 hectares of primary rainforests and other old forests – an area the size of South Africa. This past week - at FSC’s tri-annual General Assembly in Malaysia – the "sustainable" old forest logging greenwash worsened, as FSC voted (seconded by Greenpeace) to start certifying plantation timbers from land cleared of primary rainforests as being "sustainable". Being the best ecocidal rainforest destroyer is nothing to be proud of – all such deadly old forest certification schemes must stop. Please call upon all FSC members to reject the certification of primary forests by resigning immediately, as many others have recently done. Further, demand FSC immediately stop certifying primary forest logging or disband itself. Thank you for participating in EI's on-going global campaign to end primary forest logging, and to protect and restore old forests, as keystone responses to abrupt climate change, biodiversity loss, global ecosystem collapse, and abject poverty and inequity.

Geoengineering is the proposed large scale manipulation of Earth’s oceans, soils, sunlight and atmosphere with the intent of combating climate change. With no mandate, the UN's International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has begun talks on funding geoengineering research. Past adoption of virtually all major new technologies regardless of risk shows us if researched, geoengineering will surely be implemented. Modifying Earth at a planetary scale is so complex, and ecological and other side effects potentially so severe, that dire unintended consequences are certain. Simply, a biosphere cannot be engineered. The only way to address climate and ecology change is to end ecosystem loss and fossil fuel use; while equitably reducing emissions, consumption and population. Tell the United Nations to get out of the business of geoengineering, and lead by example in embracing social change and personal transformation adequate to achieve global climate and ecological sustainability.

Greenpeace's quirky new rainforest campaign says Ken is leaving Barbie (Mattel's dolls) because of rainforest destruction, yet they leave the door open for "certified" primary rainforest paper pulp for toy packaging. Ecological Internet and the global grassroots rainforest protection movement will not accept an outcome from Greenpeace USA's Barbie campaign that includes FSC certified papers from Indonesia's primary rainforests. Let Greenpeace and Mattel - manufacturers of the Barbie and Ken dolls, which Greenpeace USA alleges contains rainforest pulp in its packaging - know that paper derived from primary rainforests and certified by Forest Stewardship Council is not ecologically sustainable. Greenpeace must be encouraged to resign from FSC greenwash; and work to end primary forest logging, protect and restore standing old forests, for local and global advancement and ecology.

Papua New Guinea (PNG) has some of the world’s largest rainforests but sadly industrial logging and oil palm are booming. “Special Agriculture and Business Leases” (SABL) covering 5.2 million hectares (12.8 million acres) have been granted 74 times by the PNG government over recent years, skirting forestry laws and allowing clearcuts of primary rainforests on customary land, for oil palm which may or may not get planted. There is huge concern that SABL leases were improperly executed and will result in large scale logging without providing agricultural development. Only an independent commission of inquiry – as promised by the acting Prime Minister and supported by local NGOs, but still not yet formally convened – can clean up PNG’s latest rainforest land grab mess.

The Human Family Says End the Wars, Bring American Boys and Girls Home, Fight Ecocide: It is time for President Obama to recommit America to the rule of international law; and begin demobilizing to realize a peace dividend for global ecology, human rights and needs, and worker equity. We all share one fragile Earth. Take action for peace ecology and global forests!

There is no such thing as ecologically sustainable primary forest logging and those who say there is are using old forests for personal gain. As world's forest protection policy gurus meet in the Congo to finalize the final logging of much of Earth's large and contiguous rainforests; let loggers, governments, UN and NGOs supporting primary forest logging know that such industrial forestry can never be ecologically sustainable and must end immediately. Future biodiversity, climate, water availability and others ecosystem services depend critically upon maintaining intact forest ecosystems, ending first time industrial primary logging and other industrial development. It is simply unacceptable ecologically that the fate of Earth's last old forests continue to be first time industrial logging; albeit with greenwashing from FSC certification, RAN and other NGO approval and REDD+ funding.

Please stand online with Wisconsin Cheddar Rebellion and its brave protestors for worker and human rights. Demand that Governor Scott Walker and Senate Republicans immediately drop their roll-back of collective bargaining rights, begin negotiating their regressive budget, or warn them they will be recalled.

Old natural forest ecosystems are key to sustaining climate, ecosystems, biodiversity, humanity and the Earth System – and their logging must be excluded from international forest carbon funding. Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation (REDD) - the international program to pay for protection of old rainforests as a climate change solution - has been corrupted to include first time industrial primary rainforest logging for "sustainable" timbers and agriculture plantations. Unless REDD drops the plus and focuses funding upon ending industrial primary forest destruction while addressing systematic corruption in tropical rainforest destruction, the REDD program is no longer worthy of support by ecological forest activists.

The Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) and its members, certifiers and suppliers must commit to ending the certification of primary forest timbers, falsely implying it is sustainable to log hundreds of year old trees for toilet paper, lawn furniture and other consumer items. Please participate in EI's on-going global campaign to end primary forest logging, and to protect and restore old forests, as keystone responses to abrupt climate change, biodiversity loss and global ecosystem collapse. Please take action to ensure FSC stops certifying primary forest logging; even as together we continue to successfully confront rapacious logging companies and their government enablers - 4 major victories in last months alone!

Sir Michael Somare - PNG's deeply corrupted PM, and once the great founder of this amazing country - is illegally clinging to power and giving away natural resources by gutting environmental law. PNG has Earth's third largest rainforests and important intact fisheries which are being threatened by his efforts to run roughshod over landowners, including those trying to stop the dumping of mine waste into Madang's bays and lagoons. Given his increasingly despotic and unbalanced behavior, it is clearly time for Mr. Somare to resign.

Despite a recent two year moratorium on further illegal logging and export of precious timber from the protected areas of Madagascar, the government recently approved shipment of nearly $16 million worth of timber stolen from the country's rainforest parks. Post-coup illegal log and wildlife trade continue to threaten Madagacar's biodiversity rich rainforest remnants, ecological sustainability and future potential for national advancement. Let Madagascar's transitional government, shipping industry, and French government know they will be held responsible for these ecological crimes.

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The wild and free Xingu River is critical to maintaining intact the Amazon, its peoples, Brazil's national advancement, and the Earth we share. The Brazilian government continues with plans to build the massive Belo Monte Dam on the Xingu River in the Amazon rainforest, despite intense and growing domestic and international opposition. The 11.2 billion dollar dam will devastate an extensive area of the Amazon rainforest and threaten the survival of tens of thousands of indigenous and traditional peoples who depend on the Xingu River for their livelihoods. It is estimated 500 square kilometers of intact Amazon rainforest land would be flooded by the dam.

Chinese government owned China Metallurgical Construction (MCC) corporation's efforts to establish the massively destructive Ramu Nickel mine in Madang Province, Papua New Guinea – the largest investment in metal exploration and mining by the Chinese outside of China – is in serious jeopardy. Local landowners are successfully initiating court cases and protests to demand mine tailings not be dumped into the sea – poisoning fish stocks and causing extreme ecological destruction – or the mine be stopped. The entire project has been mismanaged, marked by shoddy construction; and disregard for local rights, life, and marine and rainforest ecology. Chinese mining investment in Madang against local wishes can only be described as an invasion of sovereign peoples, and will be resisted at all costs.

Local landowner initiated court case has shut down logging for two months in the Ramu. The PNG Forest Authority's review of the granting of the right to log to notorious Rimbunan Hijau of Malaysia in Ramu River valley expected soon. Industry and corrupt government officials pulling out all stops to re-grant permit to this violent and corrupt criminal-enterprise, and to allow Malaysian logger into the partially logged Sogeram as they wait. Massive cash payments and brutal violence – to intimidate communities resisting logging – is rife. Yet local protest to logging continues to intensify in Madang, as do calls to end all industrial primary rainforest logging in PNG.

Securing world food security while maintaining operable global old forests, climate, water, ocean and terrestrial ecosystems – and human rights, justice and equity – is the biggest challenge facing humanity. Water and food are the next bubbles to burst -- expect severe shortages of both in the 2010s. It is long past time to get back to the land through protecting and restoring old forests and organic permaculture farming. Our survival depends upon being with land, collecting water, letting forests age and growing food.

Sir Michael Somare -- Papua New Guinea’s (PNG) Prime Minister -- jets soon to Copenhagen pledging to protect the country’s rainforests in exchange for REDD carbon money. Yet back home he has left a long list of shameful and corrupt rainforest/climate policies. As Copenhagen and REDD talks start, Somare pals Rimbunan Hijau of Malaysia continue logging in Ramu, Madang, despite a court order demanding they stop. Corruption, human rights abuses, and ecological devastation have no place in REDD or Papua New Guinea.

Copenhagen climate talks must not provide 'Reduced Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation' (REDD) carbon market funds for old, natural forest logging, or for conversion of natural or semi-natural forests and other ecosystems to plantations. Ending deforestation and degradation of old and relatively ecologically intact primary and old growth forest ecosystems, and the ecological restoration of late-successional old growth forests, are keystone responses to maintaining global climate, biodiversity, water and ecosystems.

Post-coup illegal log and wildlife trade continues to threaten Madagacar's biodiversity rich rainforest remnants, ecological sustainability and future potential for national advancement. This great nation's precious hardwoods deserve CITES protections, to ensure selective logging of any sort in its primary old forests ends.

Urge all Earth's citizens and tribes to pursue a 10:10 pledge, protect and restore all old forests, and pursue other ambitious, short-term actions -- both personally and at Copenhagen -- as a start to avert abrupt climate change and global ecological collapse. Stewardship Revolution starts here as global ecological sustainability depends upon dramatically reducing greenhouse gas emissions in the short term.

Urge all Earth's citizens and tribes to pursue a 10:10 pledge, protect and restore all old forests, and pursue other ambitious, short-term actions -- both personally and at Copenhagen -- as a start to avert abrupt climate change and global ecological collapse. Stewardship Revolution starts here as global ecological sustainability depends upon dramatically reducing greenhouse gas emissions in the short term.

Ombudsman report on 20 years of corrupt IFC, World Bank Group lending to the Indonesian oil palm industry casts doubt on Bank's fitness to manage international forest carbon funds that may emerge at Copenhagen climate talks. It is time for the World Bank to end finance of oil palm, sustainable forest management, paper pulp and other industrial rainforest developments known to be the root causes of deforestation, degradation and climate change. The Bank must permanently end financial support for these industrial developments impacting primary rainforests, or it is the wrong entity to administer forest carbon monies.

The fact notorious illegal loggers Samling of Malaysia; who have devastated rainforests globally including those of the Penan, are secretly in contention for Liberian logging contracts illustrates, despite decades of failed reform efforts locally and internationally, that the global industrial tropical timber logging industry remains irredeemably corrupt. There is no evidence first time industrial logging of primary forests is ever ecologically sustainable or reduces poverty. Please call upon Liberian President to pursue development based upon standing rainforests, and reject entirely the resumption of industrial logging.

Let the Papua New Guinea (PNG) government know it must follow its people's wishes and end industrial rainforest destruction once and for all. Support local landowners in Madang Province and nationwide working bravely to end primary forest logging and pursue REDD carbon monies and other means to benefit from standing rainforests. The government cannot corruptly pursue both continued industrial logging and oil palm, and still expect to receive carbon market REDD payments for intact rainforest protection.

Major Swiss banks Credit Suisse and UBS are to further fund Golden Agri-Resources (GAR), the world's largest listed palm oil company, which currently produces 10 percent of Indonesia's palm oil. A further 1.3 million hectares of land are to be developed for palm oil plantations with Swiss finance on the island of Indonesia Kalimantan (Borneo) and in Papua on the Western half of the island of New Guinea.

Urge Southeast Asian governments to cancel plans for up to eleven mainstream dams. Ask that each regional nation commit to keeping lower expanses of the Mekong River flowing freely, without any dams, in order to save their shared critical source of food, income and life for present and future generations.

The island of Madagascar is a veritable Noah's Ark of biodiversity, and this natural wealth is the country's primary treasure and opportunity for future ecologically sustainable development. Despite a recent revolution over the matter, the Korean company Daewoo Logistics continues to pursue plans to lease half the agricultural land in Madagascar for 99 years, industrially producing maize and palm oil on 1.3 million hectares that are now biodiversity rich rainforests and gardens. There already exists a severe food crisis nationally and local peoples, who are soon to be dispossessed from their land, are protesting, causing a major government crisis. Tell Daewoo the people of Madagascar have spoken -- and to shove off and leave Madagascar's rainforests, peoples and land alone.

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Support tens of thousands of indigenous people bravely protesting Peru government's give-away of their rainforest homes to oil, mining and logging industry without their approval; insist peaceful protests are not met with further violence by President Alan Garcia's government, and that the focus for Amazonian development be upon benefiting from standing trees and intact rainforest ecosystems.

In a startling yet welcome announcement, Malaysian government's land agency now denies plans to produce oil palm in the Amazon. While the prospect of a Malaysian government agency funding Amazonian oil palm has been dealt a serious setback, it is likely this project will re-emerge. Let's get formal commitment from the Malaysian government that this project is canceled, and to stop all Malaysian government and private industry funding of oil palm expansion overseas. Maybe, just maybe, we are winning this one!

No Biomass/No Burning! Truly renewable energy must be defined as including no energy production or climate mitigation claims from food based agrofuels, live plants and ecosystems, or burning/pyrolysis of biomass of any type.

Let California Air Resources Board know all industrially produced biofuel crops from live biomass, edible or not, still require land, soil, water, fertilizer and other finite inputs. It is clear that industrial biofuels are not "renewable energy" given that these inputs are all in limited supply, and indirect land uses lead to destruction of soil and forest carbon sinks elsewhere.

Please protest proposals for large scale use of charcoal in soils for climate change mitigation, and against their inclusion into carbon markets. Biochar, along with agrofuels, will result in devastating expansion of industrial agriculture which threatens people, climate and ecosystems.

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Fuel from food and already overstressed terrestrial ecosystems is immoral and unsustainable. The Obama administration must start by rejecting the proposal to increase the corn ethanol fuel blend limit from 10-15%.

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President Morales must be encouraged to live up to his grand rhetoric, and end his government's hurried measures to decimate massive indigenous rainforest protected areas and their biodiversity and climate values, in a manner eerily reminiscent of the capitalistic system against which he rallies

There is no chance of achieving global ancient forest protection, climate stabilization and ecological sustainability until RAN and other ancient forest logging apologists follow Friends of the Earth in withdrawing from the Forest Stewardship Council and uniting to work to end ancient forest logging

It is time for the international community led by Europe to step up and finance large-scale Amazon rainforest preservation to protect the Earth's atmosphere, biodiversity, and life-giving ecosystems; while helping meet needs for national advancement

The wild and free Xingu River is critical to maintaining intact the Amazon, its peoples and the Earth we share

Leading global consumer products company poised to destroy Ivory Coast's rainforests as both investor and customer, pushing three primates to extinction, just after its future commitment to rainforest protection and certified oil palm in 2015 was much heralded by some

It is gravely unethical and ecologically devastating to expand production of biofuels by allowing land to be stolen from local Afro-Colombian communities; and at the expense of Colombia's ancient primary rainforests, food security, water resources and regional climate

Outrageous support by big environmental groups for first-time industrial logging of primary and old-growth rainforest wildernesses based upon vague claims that FSC certification makes it sustainable, well-managed and now even "carbon positive" is a big lie and must end

Only soy products that do not directly or indirectly destroy ancient rainforests, or intensify climate change and other problems inherent with large-scale industrial monocultures, will be tolerated in international markets

Given revelations of misconduct in Democratic Republic of Congo's rainforests by the World Bank, their desire to administer global carbon payments for rainforest protection as a means to address climate change is suspect

Support for "certified" ancient rainforest logging crumbles further due to string of inappropriate and illegal certifications, most recently in Peru; and as Norway rejects FSC and all primary rainforest logging certification schemes

There is no such thing as certified, sustainable logging of primary forests. Tell Greenpeace to release their suppressed report on industrial certified forestry, and to resign the chair and withdraw from the Forest Stewardship Council

Tell the World Bank, WWF and Greenpeace to stop aiding and abetting failed "sustainable" and "certified" forest management for the Congo Basin and elsewhere, and instead commit to End Ancient Rainforest Logging

All of Ecuador's protected areas including all of Yasua must be strictly protected from oil and logging

Campaign News Updates:

Protected areas, water resources and indigenous peoples will all be devastated if French Government grants environmental approvals - decision on environmental license for industrial open-air gold mining in the primary
rainforests of French Guiana expected soon!